


Don't Hold Your Breath, Kid

by Naddy



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: About to Die, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt, Hypothermia, Self-Sacrifice, Thoughts About Dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2636204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naddy/pseuds/Naddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are hundreds of thoughts racing through Peter's mind as he leaps out of the pod in the wreckage in Knowhere's exo-atmosphere, propelling himself towards Gamora, but only one of them stands out.</p><p>Don't hold your breath, kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Hold Your Breath, Kid

**Author's Note:**

> oh ho ho. There might be typos that I will fix later, I promise, and maybe add a bit more richness. I should be working on finals, but I could not focus unless I got this off my brain. You might as well get to enjoy some of my own frozen thoughts while I finish studying.

 

_Don't hold your breath, kid._

 

Once, when Peter was a kid, he asked Yondu when they were going to be back on Earth. Peter knew they never would, he'd heard it from every voice on the ship, but it didn't stop him from asking.

 

"When are we going back?" he asked, standing in the door to Yondu's room.

 

Yondu glanced over from the screen he was monitoring and with a voice touched with sympathy but buried in gruff, Yondu shot back, "Don't hold your breath, kid."

 

Its years later when Peter's a teenager and he's going on smuggling runs and excursions that increase in difficulty that he realizes how unprepared he is. He's been living in space for years now, but he's only scratched the surface of what he needs to know.

 

"Yondu, what happens if I get stuck in an airlock or something and end up jettisoned out into space?"

 

"Worst case scenario, you boil, freeze, dehydrate, and die in thirty seconds."

 

"Best case?"

 

"You don't hold your breath, kid. Trying to hold air in when you change pressure like that is sure to pop ya like a Fravilian Slug on a campfire. If you're in an exosphere or area of weak pressure and atmosphere, you might have two minutes. Just keep your under-suit and mask on and you'll be just fine though."

 

Peter nods, and luckily, doesn't need the information.

 

Except years later, he does. Peter opens a comm with no hints of encryption or subtleties and screams his coordinates into the mic. Damn any consequences. He throws himself out of the pod and toward Gamora, startlingly isolated and lonely against the nebulous background. 

 

Rocket yells as he takes his mask off, "You'll die in seconds!"

 

Not quite. Well, hopefully not quite. Gamora does have body-mods keeping her alive in the void here, but Peter's got an under-suit, and he's sure he's twice as stubborn. There's enough exo-atmosphere from Knowhere's generators here to work with his under-suit to keep his body intact and alive for a minute, two tops without air. Of course, he won't be conscious beyond the first twenty seconds.

 

Peter's not prepared for how cold it is though. Before he even gets to Gamora he can feel his muscles stiffening, weakening. There's burning, sharp, excruciating cold moving along his skin where Peter can feel ice crystals and frost blossoming and spreading over any exposed surface and deeper, into the muscle. He only manages to get his mask off of his face and onto hers because removing it comes as muscle memory.

 

Peter lets the air escape from his lungs as he pushes the mask's activator behind Gamora's ear, warming his lips for the briefest moment as he exhales in a slow measure. The ice crystals are racing along his face and neck now, and with the air gone from his lungs he's very quickly losing the ability to move any of his limbs at all or hell, even think rationally. Everything's a mess of green and orange and color and he's not sure if the color of Gamora's skin is meant to look like that, or if its a by-product of the light reflected from their environment.

 

He wonders if he'll die here, even as the fluids in his body begin to coagulate and congeal, the cold reducing his heartbeat to a sluggish pace, even as his thoughts dim. He doesn't feel like he's done yet. Star-Lord surely can't die out here, in the middle of space, with no one around to witness his final stand or make sure his body doesn't just drift endlessly.

 

For a moment, the thought of his corpse, stuck out here in space until it's picked up by the wayward gravity of some rock or struck by a ship, forgotten and then destroyed, bothers him. Then he banishes the thought, as he feels the last seconds come.

 

Peter hopes he didn't mess it all up. He hopes he did the right thing, for once in his shallowly-enjoyed but ultimately pathetic life. Peter hopes that this isn't the actual end, that there are more adventures to come. He hadn't realized how lonely he was until he found others like him, other losers, other misfits, other broken pieces who could be glued into a semi-functioning whole.

 

Yondu might save them yet, he reminds himself. He might. Or he might just fuck off and take what he can and leave them there while Peter's blood boils and his lungs shrivel into dehydrated jerky. He can trust Rocket to get Gamora out of this somehow, now that he's given her air. The empty pod is for her. He's in Yondu's hands now, for better or for worse.

 

The fluid in his eyeballs burns as the temperature of his body continues to drop and he keeps his eyes open long enough to see the red eyes of his mask come to life before he closes them. There's very bright, very white, and very familiar light that pressing in on him from all sides, wrapping him up in a cosmic blanket and beginning to pull him in another direction.  Laying a hand on Gamora's stomach, he feels her breathe more than he can hear the rasp of the re-breather.

 

  
_Don't hold your breath, kid._

 

 

Peter doesn't. 


End file.
